Horseshoe crabs are star attraction at Seaside Center event

Christina Hennessy

Published 3:33 pm, Tuesday, May 27, 2014

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Visitors to the Bruce Museum's Seaside Center in Greenwich, Conn., get a close look at a horseshoe crab. These creatures will again be featured during a First Sunday Science program slated for Sunday, June 1, 2014 at the center. Participants will learn about Project Limulus and a horseshoe tagging program coordinated through Sacred Heart University. less

Visitors to the Bruce Museum's Seaside Center in Greenwich, Conn., get a close look at a horseshoe crab. These creatures will again be featured during a First Sunday Science program slated for Sunday, June 1, ... more

Photo: Contributed Photo

Horseshoe crabs are star attraction at Seaside Center event

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The horseshoe crabs of Long Island Sound are a bit busy at the moment, deep in the midst of their six-week spawning season, but educators at the Bruce Museum's Seaside Center in Greenwich hope that a few pop in for a visit this weekend.

The Seaside Center and Sacred Heart University will team up on Sunday, June 1, for a presentation on Project Limulus, an ongoing study of horseshoe crabs, one of the world's oldest species. The initiative calls on citizens to tag the creatures and keep up with their whereabouts.

"It's going to be a lot of fun," said Peter Linderoth, the museum's manager of outreach education. "There are going to be many opportunities for citizen science."

Visitors to the center, which is located at Greenwich Point Park, will learn more about the more than 10-year-old project, which aims to study the ecology of Limulus polyphemus (its more formal name), from its habitat to its impact on the Long Island Sound ecosystem. They also will have the chance to spot and tag horseshoe crabs on the beach.

Since the late 1990s, Jennifer Mattei, a biology professor at Sacred Heart University and co-director of Project Limulus, has had her eyes on Long Island Sound's horseshoe crabs. Early on, she learned she would have to call in some recruits.

"We are trying to cover 110 miles (of shoreline)," she said, adding that she modeled her efforts after the citizen science programs launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University, which calls on people around the country to count birds, watch nests and track visitors at backyard feeders.

With training and education, residents up and down Connecticut (and Westchester County, N.Y.) shores can learn to tag the animals and then track them, adding to a growing body of data, Mattei said.

This is the third year that the project has taken up shop for an afternoon at the Greenwich center. The day is presented with assistance from the Friends of Greenwich Point and the Town of Greenwich.

"We work to present a big family-day style program," Linderoth said, adding that all ages can get involved. "Participants get to learn a little bit more about the project, about horseshoe ecology and about the importance of tagging."

Once the crabs are tagged, they head back out, but they are not without their watchers. Volunteer observers are encouraged to look out for the unique tags on their walks or runs along the beach and call in the number and location. "Location is key," he said, allowing the researchers to track the animals' movements in and around the Sound.

He said university students and other center educators also try to dispel misconceptions, too, such as any lingering fear that the tail, or telson, is some sort of stinger. It is not -- it is more like a rudder, which they use in the water, and as a tool to flip themselves over if they end up on their backs.

Mattei said people also learn that though the species has been around since the time of the dinosaurs, it is integral to cutting-edge medical advancements. Unique cells in their blood, or amebocytes, are used to test human vaccines for bacterial contamination.